href="http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=Morphix">DistroWatch),

so their statistics are probably off. And we've only been hosting on sf.net since 0.3-5.

Do you know of any large organization that is using Morphix?

Thankfully no! It still has quite a lot of bugs, but things are slowly getting better. Even then, Morphix isn't a full platform to be used in large organizations, not yet. Recently, Debian-NP

(non-profit) has been started, a Debian ubproject, and they have been interested in a Morphix/Knoppix-based system for distributing. It'll be interesting to see how this will work out, as on the workstation side Morphix works fine (although there is work left to be done), but for quick deployment you need a server distribution too. Having two different types of live CDs to quickly set up a network, that would be fun. :)

Do you think CD bootable Linux distros are the way to go?

Naturally; if I didn't I wouldn't have started

Morphix. :)

I think the popularity of Knoppix speaks for itself. Live CDs are a great thing to have around, and certainly much more useful than a Red Hat CD lying around somewhere. They are easy and fast to use, cheap to give away, and when installing is easy they make for a great hard disk distribution. Some people might want to juggle around with 7 CDs, or want to build their system up from scratch. Kudos to them, but if John Doe wants to give GNU/Linux a spin, starting the computer and popping in a CD should be all it takes. To get stuff done quickly, live CDs beat install-first

distributions hands down. In terms of flexibility, however, install-first distributions have the advantage. Morphix is a hybrid, letting you choose at download time what you'll end up with. It gives

you a choice.

Will that help in the desktop

acceptability of Linux?

It lowers the bar for people trying out GNU/Linux, naturally. But personally, I think projects like OpenOffice.org, Evolution, and Mozilla are a tad more important. Users can forgive the trauma of installing something if what they get is worth the trouble and does the job. Live CDs give John Doe a preview of what they'll have once they take the trouble of installing.

This article was first published on Newsforge.